Dish may outbid Sprint for T-Mobile, become fourth major carrier

Dish will not "sit on the sidelines" if Sprint tries to buy T-Mobile.

Days after Sprint was revealed to be considering a purchase of T-Mobile US, satellite provider Dish Network is reportedly thinking about making a bid of its own.

A potential Sprint/T-Mobile merger would leave the US with just three major cellular carriers and would be heavily scrutinized by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. A Dish purchase of T-Mobile would maintain the status quo of four major nationwide carriers and would perhaps be more palatable to antitrust authorities.

"Dish Network Corp, which lost out to Japanese telecoms giant Softbank in its attempt to buy Sprint Corp several months ago, has since been sizing up T-Mobile US Inc. as a takeover candidate and has talked to majority owner Deutsche Telekom AG about a potential deal, the three sources said," Reuters wrote. "Sprint is also mulling a takeover of T-Mobile and could make a bid in the first half of 2014, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal last week. While Dish has not yet decided whether to move forward with a bid, the company does not intend to sit on the sidelines if Sprint does bid for T-Mobile, two of the people said."